Travels Of A T-Shirt

On page 72 of The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy, I found a paragraph that caught my eye, the last one on the page. The paragraph reads: “But whether we view China’s dominance in textiles and apparel as a failure or victory, China’s position at the top is strikingly different from the dominance of American cotton producers. While American cotton growers have held their position for 200 years, experience suggest that dominance in the textile and apparel industries has historically been a fleeting moment, a brief stop in the race to the bottom in this intensely competitive industry. To understand China’s victory in the race today, to understand why American cotton travels so far to become a T-shirt and ultimately to decide whether the race to the bottom (or perhaps the top) is a good thing or a bad thing, something to be stopped or facilitated, let us examine the course of the race itself: Where did it start? Where does it end? What happens to the winners and losers? And what about the young woman eating thin rice gruel?”

This got me thinking about how much has changed from when this book was written (2006), compared to now (2009). I feel like within the last 3 years, the world has become even more interdependent and globalized, primarily with the increase in technology and trade among countries, this was a great thing. Now with the Economic turmoil the effects of lessening trade between countries, I’m not sure if being so globalized is actually good. The paragraph in the book talks about China as well and the US’ dominance in the textile industry, which is not really the case today anymore. It’s pretty evident that the Economy in the United States is not good which is having severe negative effects basically everywhere, whether it be the textile industry, the automotive industry, or the rising unemployment rates and layoffs that every company seems to be making. China’s textile industry is struggling as well, due to globalization and the fact that problems in the US directly affect China (as well as other countries) something I spoke about in my previous blog. China even had to initiate a stimulus package to help the industry regain its dominance and convert to more technology based rather than manual labor.

I found an article on the US cotton industry, about a cotton farmer in Southern California who is going to have to shut down his farm after working with cotton his whole life, because of fuel costs and urban centers pushing for a larger share of the state’s water supply. Due to the fact that cotton, is a “water-intensive crop and the fields here are irrigated by canals that draw from the Colorado River, the source of drinking water for much of Southern California.” I understand that that fuel costs would play a major fact into a farm shutting down, however water supply seems weird to me. We take water for granted so much, and the fact that in today’s day and age a farm cannot get enough water to keep on producing just doesn’t seem right. The article also made reference to China, “[b]ut the growth of textile mills in countries like China and India and improvements in mill technology mean buyers new look to lower quality- and less expensive- lint and rely on mills to make up the difference.” With China’s stimulus package aiming to reduce manual labor to more technology labor, the cotton farmers that are still in business in the US are in trouble. The paragraph of the book says, “…dominance in the textile and apparel industries has historically been a fleeting moment, a brief stop in the race to the bottom in this intensely competitive industry,” what this means is that a country cannot stay at the top of a certain industry forever, and this is being illustrated today with the US and China, two textile giants who were once at the top of their game, and now struggling to maintain their title.

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/19cotton.html?scp=1&sq=cotton%20industry&st=cse